Thinking

[maharetr]

I was pondering this one night, remembering a long-ago coffee conversation with [Poll #1055089]

 

Comments

[akire-yta.livejournal.com]

I think in multimedia - sound, pictures, colours, words. My head is like a scrapbook kept by a demented magpie, and memory is as much by association as by direct link. For example, I think of seasons as smells.

[maharetr.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that smell (of all the senses) is the fastest/most immediate way to trigger memory, but thinking of seasons as smells sounds particularly cool ;)

[psycho-tabby.livejournal.com]

I'v found out that sounds are really strongly linked to memories as well. When a mate and I drove up to Broome we took a whole bunch of CD'S with us, and if I play those CD's now I get the strongest recollection of the patch of road I was driving on listening to it on the trip. And this isn't interesting road, just the most boring scrubby stretch of outback and I can recall it in really stunning detail.

[akire-yta.livejournal.com]

though it can be disorientating when you smell a season out of season.

I've always had an extremely heightened sense of smell, so it doesn't surprise me, but it is hard to explain. We don't have a lot of words for smell, really.

[ascetic-hedony.livejournal.com]

Primarily I think in words as sound, sometimes I get pictures, particularly when trying to remember something or tell a story.

[maharetr.livejournal.com]

*nods* That's pretty similar to what I do.

[buoy-wonder.livejournal.com]

I think in experiences.

I don't really know how to explain it. Using your example I would experience the conversation, I would "have" the conversation again. Sometimes I latch onto a particular aspect of the conversation such as a feel I had or a smell or sight.

...

Wow that sounds so wanky, :-)

[cupidsbow.livejournal.com]

Mostly pictures and dialogue when I was younger, but I've trained myself to translate into words as text, and now I usually get a combination of both.

[maharetr.livejournal.com]

It's encouraging to know it's something you can train yourself to do. It's not something I'd thought possible, but given that I spent part of a dull work afternoon trying to think in pictures... *perseveres* And yeah, thinking in words definitely makes it easier to get those words on paper!

[cricketk.livejournal.com]

Pictures, but more like a whole bunch of flashing, loosely related images, rather than an orderly array of moving image, with occasional wafts of audio and/or scent.

[maharetr.livejournal.com]

Your description is pretty much how I imagined "thinking in pictures" would go. I really like the idea of "wafts of audio", it's a lovely concept. :)

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

Concepts. Kind of like little cliffs leaping one to another - though there are often many 'next leap' choices.

These little cliffs, these concepts are usually just that... thoughts, but not words or pictures or sounds or smells... but thoughts.

Abstracty/metaphoric maybe is a better way of describing...

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

Things that I can't describe in words that have relationships to each other - a sort of spatial arrangement. Sometimes I can track them by how 'high' they are.

[zebra363.livejournal.com]

I'm a mix, really, but I think words as sound is the best description. I don't write stories, but if I'm thinking over a problem or situation it's like I'm talking to myself. Sometimes I add visuals too.

[psycho-tabby.livejournal.com]

Mines a mix of Movie-screen like pictures, and Words as sounds. I find it very very hard to see words as text in my head (probably one part of why I'm such a shit speller). If i'm thinking about something that has no visual components, say reading your meme, I just think/hear the words, if I'm thinking about something for which there is a visual component such as a hockey game or a movie, I see it.

[zippitgood.livejournal.com]

I'm a mix most of the time. Sometimes it's this crystal clear image, others it's characters talking and describing things.